Tag Archives: Carrie Frederick Frost

Orthodox Christianity: Offering Material Piety to Twenty-first Century America

by Carrie Frederick Frost

Uspenski_Helsinki_Interior_2

Material piety was central to the early Church and it flourishes to this day within Orthodox Christianity. That Christians would love the material, created world makes perfect sense—their God took on matter in order to appear in the world of His creation. And early Christians understood that their path to God would be walked in that world; embodied as a human, among the other animals, alongside the trees, over the earth, beneath the sky.

Early Christians expressed this love for matter through their ornamentation of the catacombs of Rome, which were places not just of burial of the dead, but of gathering, of worship, and of praise. The same goes for outside spaces in later centuries, when noble women gathered in cemeteries to care for the graves and their park-like surroundings. The faithful also crafted religious objects: rings, bracelets, and ampullae for oil from holy sites, thus feeding their proclivity for, as Robert Wilken calls it, tactile piety: “worship with the lips and fingertips.” Continue Reading…

Childbirth is a Blessing, Not an Occasion of Impurity

by Carrie Frederick Frost  |  ру́сский

churching

Multiple petitions are offered for the fruitfulness of a couple’s union during an Orthodox marriage service, so many that a college friend characterized my wedding as a fertility rite. One such example: “That He will grant unto them the enjoyment of the blessing of children…let us pray to the Lord.”

Based on the sentiment that children are a blessing to be enjoyed that is expressed in the marriage service, one might assume that the Orthodox prayers said after the birth of a child are full of thanksgiving and rejoicing; the nuptial prayers have, after all, been answered. Instead, these qualities are noticeably lacking from the post-childbirth prayers that are part of the Orthodox Euchologion, the compendium of services: the First Day prayers (said soon after childbirth) and the Churching (for when the mother and child come to church the first time after childbirth). Continue Reading…

Women Deacons in Africa; Not in America

by Carrie Frederick Frost

deaconesses

History was made on February 17, 2017 when five women were consecrated deaconesses in the Orthodox Church. For many of us, this is a welcome but shocking development.

Speaking for myself, I expected the reintroduction of a female diaconate to occur in Greece, or elsewhere in Europe, or, even more likely, the United States; say, Pittsburgh. These are the places with multiple advocacy groups and a robust academic investigation into the history and pastoral function of the female diaconate.

Frankly, I anticipated—in a most unexamined way—the first Orthodox deaconess of our era would be white woman. (Let me pause and be clear, lest my readers be distracted: even though I am a white American woman advocating for the female diaconate, I have neither call nor desire to serve in this way.)

I now know that I suffered a serious failure of imagination. Continue Reading…

In the Hope of Restoration of Communion between the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches

by Carrie Frederick Frost, Vigen Guroian, Jennifer Haddad Mosher, and Valerie G. Zahirsky

We wish to bring attention to one of the items not specifically included on the Great and Holy Council’s agenda or in its preconciliar documents: the restoration of communion between the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches. Our group is comprised of three Orthodox Christians and one Armenian Orthodox Christian, and we eagerly anticipate the day our churches will once again be united with each other. Continue Reading…